UCAR/NCAR Junior Faculty Forum on Future Scientific Directions 2003
JUNE 18-20, 2003
at NCAR's Center Green facility in Boulder, CO
The objective of this forum is to bring together junior faculty and members of NCAR's Early Career Scientists Assembly (ECSA) to discuss selected topics in the Geosciences. This forum is open to non-tenured faculty at U.S. universities with preference given to those within five years of their first professorial academic appointment. In addition to promoting scientific discussion, an intended goal of the forum is to encourage development of professional relationships between members of ECSA and UCAR institutions.
The topics chosen for this year's forum are as follows:
- Predictability
- The water cycle
- Interactions between land ecosystems and the atmospheric hydrologic cycle
FORMAT: The forum will consist of a plenary session that focuses on providing an overview of these topics, their inter-relationships, and place in Geoscience research. Representatives from government agencies will also be invited to present how these topics relate to priorities in funding for research in the Geosciences. Following this session attendees will divide into three groups - one for each topic - for in-depth presentations and discussion. All attendees are encouraged to give presentations. More detailed information on the objectives of each group are presented below. The forum will conclude with another plenary session where summary reports from each group will be presented.
TOPIC DETAILS:
a. Predictability
Predictability is a property of a class of dynamic systems that is ubiquitous in geophysical and biological sciences, and should not be confused with "prediction error" or "predictive skill". Scientific questions to address would be designed to expose differences and similarities in how predictability is understood and studied, with the goal of identifying intersection points that could produce fruitful collaborative efforts. Questions to addressed will be:
- What aspects of predictability and error growth span many disciplines?
- What can studying predictability as a concept tell us?
- How does predictability relate to other fields within our disciplines?
- How should we study predictability so that results can be generalized?
- What are the most important and tractable aspects of predictability and error growth that require immediate study?
Final Presentation (PowerPoint)
Resulting submitted BAMS article (PDF)
Session chairs: Joshua Hacker and Jim Hansen
b. The water cycle
This group will focus on a discussion of all scales of the water cycle, with an emphasis on bringing together various approaches and communities. The focus will be on promoting interactions among all those dealing with water substance in the earth climate system. Three discussion topics are proposed.
First, a discussion among those working with water vapor, precipitation and land-surface hydrology to better define key issues in the hydrological cycle.
Second, a discussion of how present and future models and observations of the hydrologic cycle can be better integrated.
Third, the challenges of working across different space and time scales, from what is traditionally considered 'weather' to 'climate'.
Final Presentation (PowerPoint)
Resulting submitted BAMS article (PDF)
Session chairs: Andrew Gettelman, Junhong (June) Wang, David Gochis and Anna Barros
Interactions between land ecosystems and the atmospheric hydrologic cycle
This topic will cover the coupled cycle between land ecosystems and the atmospheric hydrologic cycle. Discussions of how different ecosystems affect the development of clouds and precipitation and how clouds and precipitation affect the land ecosystem will be conducted. Foci of the discussions will be:
- The importance of emitted aerosols and precursor gases from the biosphere on the production of secondary aerosol in the atmosphere and the resulting impacts on cloud condensation nuclei and cloud properties.
- The relative importance of sensible and latent heat fluxes from an ecosystem on cloud properties compared to emitted aerosols and gases.
- The importance of clouds and precipitation on ecosystem environmental parameters such as soil moisture, surface temperature and photosynthetically active radiation.
- The effects of human perturbations on the coupled cycle.
Final Presentation (PowerPoint)
Resulting submitted BAMS article (PDF)
Session chairs: Mary Barth, Christine Wiedinmyer, Jielun Sun and Joe McFadden
list of attendees for Predictability
(* indicates chairs)
| Judith Berner | NCAR / CGD |
| Gidon Eshel | Univ. of Chicago |
| * Joshua Hacker | NCAR / MMM |
| Gregory Hakim | University of Washington |
| Tom Hamill | University of Colorado, Boulder |
| * Jim Hansen | MIT |
| Steven Lazarus | Florida Institute of Technology |
| Sharanya J Majumdar | RSMAS/MPO University of Miami |
| Rebecca Morss | NCAR / MMM |
| Andrew Poje | College of Staten Island, CUNY |
| Vitalii Sheremet | Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Youmin Tang | Courant Institute of Mathematical sciences |
| Colleen Webb | Colorado State University |
list of attendees for Water Cycle
(* indicates chairs)
| Bruce T. Anderson | Boston University |
| * Ana P. Barros | Harvard University |
| Kate Beierle | NCAR / ATD |
| John Braun | NCAR / GST |
| Will Cantrell | Michigan Technological University |
| YangQuan Chen | Utah State University |
| Amy Clement | RSMAS/University of Miami |
| Neil Fox | University of Missouri - Columbia |
| Bart Geerts | University of Wyoming |
| * Andrew Gettelman | NCAR / ACD |
| * David Gochis | NCAR / RAP |
| Weiqing Han | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Michael Herzog | University of Michigan |
| Paul Kucera | University of North Dakota |
| Robert Kursinski | University of Arizona |
| Arlene Laing | University of South Florida |
| Changhai Liu | NCAR / MMM |
| Eric D. Maloney | COAS/Oregon State University |
| Steve Margulis | University of California, Los Angeles |
| David Schultz | Univ Oklahoma/Coop Inst for Mesoscale Meteor Studies |
| Steven Sherwood | Yale University |
| Eric Small | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Adam Sobel | Columbia U. |
| Holger Vömel | CIRES, University of Colorado |
| * Junhong (June) Wang | NCAR / ATD |
| Zhien Wang | University of Maryland |
list of attendees for Interactions between land ecosystems and the atmospheric hydrologic cycle
(* indicates chairs)
| * Mary Barth | NCAR / ACD |
| Patrick Chuang | UC Santa Cruz |
| Don Collins | Texas A&M University |
| Robert Griffin | University of New Hampshire |
| Michael Hannigan | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Thomas Karl | NCAR / ACD |
| Si-Wan Kim | NCAR / MMM |
| Sonia Lasher-Trapp | Purdue University |
| Sam Levis | NCAR / CGD |
| Marcy Litvak | University of Texas, Austin |
| Natalie Mahowald | NCAR / CGD |
| * Joe McFadden | University of Minnesota |
| Katharine Moore | NCAR / ACD |
| Sreela Nandi | NCAR / ACD |
| Eiko Nemitz | NCAR / ACD |
| Athanasios Nenes | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Mark Potosnak | NCAR / ACD |
| Timothy M. Raymond | Bucknell University |
| James Smith | NCAR / ACD |
| Christopher Still | UC Santa Barbara |
| Craig Stroud | NCAR / ACD |
| * Jielun Sun | NCAR / MMM |
| * Christine Wiedinmyer | NCAR / ACD |